9-year-old 3D prints a prosthetic hand for a man born without a right hand

Sep 22, 2016 | By Tess

In a particularly heartwarming story from the 3D printing world, a 9-year-old boy has taken it upon himself to create a 3D printed prosthetic hand for an adult man who was born without one.

The 9-year-old in question, Calramon Mabalot, is an exceptional child, who has not only taken to 3D printing as a hobby, but has already turned it into a business, founding his very own online 3D printing service, Brother Robot, with his brother and father. While you may have perhaps never heard of the small scale 3D printing hub, the resourceful young boy has already completed more than fifty 3D printing orders through it.

Despite his small but growing 3D printing service, Calramon was inspired to make a 3D printed prosthetic hand for Nick, who was born without a right hand, for free. Nick, a Canadian visiting San Diego, was brought into a 3D printing tutorial at Calmaron’s local library, which was organized by librarian Uyen Tran. There, as the librarian gave basic instructions on 3D printing a prosthetic hand, Calramon became interested in creating a 3D printed hand for Nick, who happily offered to be the 9-year-old’s “guinea pig”.

The 3D printed prosthetic hand that Calramon made for Nick was based off of designs and instructions from e-NABLE, the organization that brings together makers from all over the world to design and create open-source 3D printed prosthetic hands for children. The prototyping process for the hand, which took a few attempts, was all done at the local library, while the final processes of assembling were done by Calramon at home in his own 3D printing lab.

Upon receiving the hand, Nick was not only joyful, but very impressed with the young man who made the device. As Calramon explained, “It was great. He was super happy. He was really impressed that you could do that. I feel good because I learned and I also helped somebody.”

Impressively, this is not Calramon’s first 3D printing project, and it certainly won’t be his last. In July, the young boy also started working on a 3D printed arm for his father’s colleague, who lost his arm in a car accident. The 3D scanning process for this can be seen on Calramon’s popular Twitter page. The 9-year-old maker is also super into making 3D printed quadcopters, which him and his family offer through the Brother Robot website.